Hydropoetics: Myth, Reality, and Literature in the Eastern Nile Basin
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Date
2024-01-09
Authors
Endalew, Yewulsew
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Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
How do literary and folkloric traditions of the Nile inform the region’s water politics? My dissertation answers this question by analyzing poetry and songs from Ethiopia, Sudan, and Egypt—three of the five countries of the Eastern Nile Basin. I take the Nile as a quintessential site for comparison across regions, languages, and genres at the intersection of African Studies, comparative literature, and global cultural studies. In the various chapters of my project, I consider how poetry is, at times, inseparable of the nationalist projects of respective governments and, at other times, a challenge to the constraints of cultural and linguistic identity, nationalism, and the legacies of historical water treaties. Hydropolitical debates regarding water policy anchor my project, and each poem and song I examine demonstrates some of the cultural and literary impacts these forms have on imagining relationships to the Nile. I take seriously the linguistic, formal, and generic dimensions to the poetry and songs I address, spanning Amharic, English, Ge’ez, Arabic, and Nubian, as well as lyric, free verse, prose, and popular song. I weave historical and political documents together with mythology and other folkloric expressions as a crucial backdrop to discussions of the present-day situation in Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia. My project thus considers the dynamic interplay between historical and mythological moments that reemerge in the 20th century in the eastern Nile basin.
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Keywords
Eastern Nile Basin, Ethiopia Sudan Egypt, folklore, hydropoetics, hydropolitics, Nile